Week One at the Chemical Heritage Foundation...or Week One at a warehouse in NJ

Tools of the trade
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}

This is our special rolling temporary work station at the warehouse
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}

During my first week at the CHF, we took on the task of creating an inventory of the objects housed in off-site storage. The goal of the week was to gain intellectual control of the off-site collection - meaning that in order for a collections manager to cultivate and grow their collection, they must have a full understanding of what is in the collection to begin with. We packed up important items at the museum (gloves, dust masks, tape measures, laptops, foam, bubble wrap, acid-free paper, cameras, and flashlights) and headed off to New Jersey! First, we created a spreadsheet in order to efficiently document each object in storage, along with its condition. The headings of the spreadsheet read: Object Name, Accession Number, Old Accession Number, Warehouse ID Number, Location (warehouse aisle), Object Dimensions, Y/N on the warehouse packing list, Condition Report, Number of photos taken. We needed to unpack each item in storage because multiple items were listed on the warehouse packing list as "miscellaneous items on pallet", or "skid of instruments"; which could have been anywhere from 2-40 unique objects listed under 1 warehouse ID number. It was quite time consuming to unpack each object. We also found a bunch of hidden glassware packed away within larger scientific instruments. And by "packed", I mean there were beakers and other glassware items tucked away and thrown into drawers or any open space within some instruments.

The larger instruments were unpacked by the warehouse workers and put into the center of the aisles
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}

This was the large and careful packaging of a light prism from Germany
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}

I, along with the Exhibit Design intern, measure and photograph an object from a "skid of instruments"
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}

We typically created teams of three people; one person for each job. 1 person typing on the laptop, 1 person taking measurements, and 1 person taking reference photos at multiple angles. We averaged about 5 photos per instrument, which left us with over 500 photos. My next job was to match these 500 photos with each object's ID number within the computer system... but that's a story for my next blog. Once we documented each object, we needed to repack the smaller instruments to the highest museum standard that we could for the circumstances that we were in. We repacked the instruments in museum-quality paper and bubble wrap, and gave older instruments new boxes and foam padding for the walls of the boxes. One very interesting thing that happened is that a box with mercury at the bottom was found under a pile of instruments! One instrument had broken over the years, or in transit to the warehouse, and it spilled mercury all over the bottom of a cardboard box. It was interesting to see the proper procedure for taking care of the spill, and also the broken instrument so that it would no longer leak hazardous materials inside the warehouse. Overall, the warehouse experience was important to have. Collections managers have a difficult job that goes far beyond working with exhibit designers or collecting interesting objects; sometimes they have to put on a dust mask and assess objects on the floor of a warehouse in New Jersey. 

The infamous mercury spill
{Photo Courtesy of Sarah Sutton}